Whenever I try to make a CD I get the following errors:
Sonic: No compatible recordable devices found on system.
Roxio: CD Copier could not locate a supported CD Rom reader. Creator API can't see all the cdroms in the system please check if they are connected properly.
I have two optical drives: HP DVD-RW 400i and HP CD-RW 9300.
I can't solve this problem by restoring system. I have already uninstalled then reinstalled both drives from the device manager. After rebooting Windows XP correctly identifies and automatically loads the drivers for both drives. After noticing that the "enable recording" box on the properties tab unchecks itself, (following instructions on web) I changed the device type from "1" to "2" (recordable) for both devices in the registry. Now whenever I enable recording on one of the drives, the other one automatically unchecks "enable recording". And I still get the same error messages. What is wrong? Thanks in advance for any suggestions, advice. I have already tried several registry cleaners without success.

Try changing the IDE ribbon. If that doesn't work, try uninstalling the ide chanell and then rebooting and let the Operating system install the drives again.( I see you have tried that) You could also just disconnect 1 drive and see if it works, do that with each drive and see if the drive is bad. Just a bit of advice, don't mess with regisrty setting unless you are sure you know what you are doing. You could also try a different software, I wouldn't use Roxio or Sonic, but thats just my preference.

Alan,
Thank you for your suggestions. I followed your advise, but it didn't help, so I finally decided to just remove (physically) one of the two drives. I also uninstalled the Sonic and Roxio softwares, and installed Nero express and CDit instead. Everything seems to work fine, though I am still baffled about what could have caused the original problem.

This happened to me once a year or so ago. The problem was that the two drives I was using would not co exist. This is not a unique problem. I was surprised because they were the same manufacturer. I simply switched the two DVD burners in two of my PC's.